8.8 KiB
Worldview
After living openly with schizoaffective disorder, building relationships that survive mental health challenges, and learning what actually creates sustainable well-being, certain patterns have become clear. These aren't rules—they're recognitions of what serves human flourishing and what systematically degrades it.
I strongly believe in fallibilism—the recognition that knowledge can be improved and beliefs can be wrong.
How I See Life
I was raised in a Christian household with strong Calvinist influences—traditions that emphasized hard work, moral clarity, and the idea that how you live your daily life reflects your deepest convictions. While my relationship with organized religion has evolved, those foundational values shaped my understanding of what it means to live with integrity.
The Calvinist emphasis on vocation as calling—the idea that all work, done well and in service of others, carries spiritual significance—profoundly influenced how I approach technology development. Writing code isn't just problem-solving; it's an act of creation that can either serve human flourishing or exploit human weakness. The quality of attention you bring to your craft determines whether you're building tools or weapons.
This conviction led me to understand programming as spiritual practice—a discipline where technical excellence and moral responsibility become inseparable. The same attention to detail that creates elegant code creates sustainable relationships. The same commitment to truth-telling that enables effective debugging enables authentic communication. The same patience required for complex problem-solving serves the slow work of personal healing and community building.
What I've Learned About Relationships
Success in mental health struggles looks different for everyone. Some people need medication. Others therapy. Some both, some find other paths entirely. There's no universal template—just the reality that everyone's somewhere different on their journey.
Meet people where they are, not where you think they should be. When someone needs different conditions to participate—mental health accommodations, accessibility needs, different communication styles—meeting those needs creates better outcomes for everyone. This isn't charity. It's recognizing that human diversity is practical wisdom.
Intimacy requires risk, performance prevents it. The deeper relationships in my life happened when I stopped trying to be impressive and started being honest. Mental health disclosure teaches you this quickly. People who can handle your reality are worth keeping. People who need you to be different aren't.
Conflict is information, not failure. The healthiest relationships I have are ones where we can disagree without threatening the relationship itself. This requires talking about how we talk, setting boundaries explicitly, and choosing repair over being right.
How This Applies to Making Things
The same patterns that create healthy relationships and sustainable mental health also create good technology, communities, and creative work.
Design for Your Worst Day
I build things assuming people are stressed, distracted, or having mental health episodes. That's when tools matter most. If it works when you're struggling, it works for everyone. Simple interfaces. Clear error messages. Obvious next steps. This isn't just good design—it's basic human compassion.
Make the Right Path Easy
Ethics and ergonomics should align. If doing the right thing requires extra effort, most people won't do it. Not because they're bad—because they're human. Good design makes virtue convenient and harm difficult. This applies to API defaults, notification systems, how communities handle conflict.
Optimize for Outcomes, Not Metrics
When success is defined by engagement or growth metrics, systems inevitably start optimizing humans for the metrics rather than optimizing for human wellbeing. The algorithm eats virtue, then democracy, then language itself.
I measure success differently: Do people accomplish their goals more easily? Do they feel more capable afterward? Does this enhance human agency or diminish it?
Manipulation Scales Predictably
Personal healing taught me to recognize manipulation patterns—gaslighting, intermittent reinforcement, isolation, reality distortion. These same techniques operate in algorithmic systems targeting billions. Once you see it in relationships, you can't unsee it in platform design.
What I Aim For
Relationships That Can Handle Reality
- People who can disagree without threatening the relationship.
- Communities with explicit conflict resolution practices.
- Friends who show up during mental health episodes, not just celebrations.
- Conversations that create more understanding, not less.
- Anti-drift mechanisms that prevent communities from excluding the people who embody their values most authentically.
Work That Serves Life
- Tools that amplify human capability rather than replace human agency.
- Business models where success aligns with human flourishing.
- Technology that makes people feel more capable, not more dependent.
- Interfaces designed for people having difficult days.
- Systems that respect attention rather than harvesting it.
Sustainable Well-being Practices
- Mental health management that works long-term, not just in crisis.
- Daily routines that prevent problems rather than just solving them.
- Creative work that emerges from wholeness rather than woundedness.
- Spiritual practices that integrate shadow rather than bypassing it.
- Economic choices that don't require harming others.
How I Work With Others
Start with repair, not punishment. When conflict happens, I try private conversation before public consequences. Most problems come from misunderstanding or different needs, not bad intentions. Restoration usually works better than separation.
Be clear about needs and limits. I share mental health information not for sympathy but for practical collaboration. Knowing I need advance notice for big decisions or prefer written communication helps projects succeed.
Choose your battles consciously. Not every disagreement needs to become a debate. Not every harm needs to become a cause. Save your energy for fights that actually matter and where you can actually create change.
Default to documentation. Write down decisions, expectations, and agreements. This prevents confusion and accommodates different memory and processing styles. Prefer asynchronous communication when possible.
What Doesn't Work
Perfectionist thinking. All-or-nothing approaches to health, relationships, or work create cycles of shame and burnout. Recovery means learning to work with yourself as you are, not as you think you should be.
Performance over connection. Trying to manage how others perceive you prevents authentic relationship. The most meaningful connections happen when you stop trying to be impressive and start being honest.
Systems that extract rather than serve. Whether it's technology designed to harvest attention, communities that demand conformity, or economic models that require exploitation—anything that treats humans as resources to be optimized rather than beings to be served.
Conflict avoidance. Healthy relationships require the ability to disagree without threatening the relationship itself. Avoiding difficult conversations just lets problems compound until they become crises.
What Guides Me
Health first. Take medication, drink water, sleep eight hours, say no to what depletes you. Everything else depends on this foundation.
Transparency over performance. Share reality rather than managing impressions. The people who can handle your truth are worth keeping.
Repair over punishment. When conflict happens, choose restoration over separation. Most problems come from misunderstanding, not malice.
Simplicity as service. Make things clear enough for people having bad days. If it's too complex when you're struggling, it's too complex.
Boundaries as care. Say no to create space for authentic yes. Protect your energy so you can give from abundance rather than depletion.
This is how I've learned to live: taking care of the human being first, then figuring out how to make that human being useful to others. The work—whether it's code, writing, or relationships—emerges from that foundation.
Everything else is just an implementation detail.